Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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WASHINGTON: A majority of Americans do not see Pakistan as a friend to the United States, says an opinion survey released on Monday.

The survey, conducted on Nov 27, a day after a Nato air strike killed 25 Pakistani soldiers, asked US citizens: Do you consider Pakistan to be a friend or enemy of the United States?

An enemy to the US was the choice of 55 per cent respondents. Only seven pc said they considered Pakistan a friend, 26 pc did not consider Pakistan a friend or enemy and 12 pc did not have an opinion.

The surveyors, a US polling agency called Poll Positions, noted that the relationship between the United States and Pakistan had been up and down over the past years.Read more ....My Comment: Finding Osama bin Laden in a compound that was literally next door to Pakistan's top military academy and 35 miles north of their capital city did more to destroy U.S. trust in Pakistan .... than any other Pakistani action. Couple this with Pakistani actions after Bin Laden's killing, nuclear proliferation, support (and protection) of terror groups that are targeting Afghan/U.S. forces, and artillery strikes in Afghan proper .... it is now very hard for most Americans to believe anything that now comes out of Pakistan's government/military/intelligence departments.

Islamabad's generals have been sponsoring the deaths of Americans for years, and yet Obama does nothing. Why?

Pakistan is indignant about the killing of 25 of its troops in a NATO air raid on Saturday. The circumstances that led to the assault are still unknown, but Washington and Europe have expressed contrition and promised an investigation. Pakistan has every reason to feel angry. But after a suitable period of mourning, shouldn't the United States, in the interests of fairness if nothing else, ask the Pakistani army if it plans ever to apologize for -- or, at bare minimum, acknowledge -- its role in the deaths of hundreds of coalition forces and many more Afghan civilians?

Leading In Vote, Egypt’s Brotherhood Seeks To Form Gov’t In Possible Collision With Military -- Washington Post/AP

CAIRO — Partial results Wednesday showed the Muslim Brotherhood emerging as the biggest winner in Egypt’s landmark parliamentary elections, and leaders of the once-banned Islamic group demanded to form the next government, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with the ruling military.

The generals who took power after the February fall of Hosni Mubarak have said they will name the government and the parliament would have no right to dissolve it. They have also sought to wrest from the new parliament the more long-reaching and crucial role of running the process for writing the new constitution.

A day after Iranian protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran, Britain has said it is withdrawing its diplomats, and closing Iran's embassy in London . The question that remains is - who was behind the attack?

Images broadcast on Iranian state television on Tuesday showed an angry crowd of mostly men gathered in front of the British embassy in Tehran. Women enveloped in black stood at the back.

Chanting "death to England," a group of protesters stormed the embassy compound and a diplomatic residence while the security forces simply stood by.Read more ....

Don't Take On Iran Unless You're Prepared To Face The Consequences -- Con Coughlin, The Telegraph

The violent attack on the British Embassy in Tehran is Iran's entirely predictable response to the tough line the British government has taken in recent weeks in response to the ayatollahs' controversial nuclear programme.

Britain became public enemy number one in Tehran after it decided to ban all Iran's banks from trading in London, thereby dealing a major blow to Iran's access to Europe's financial markets.

The NATO air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last Saturday, sparking a fresh crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations, started with a mysterious report of firing from the Pakistani side of the border, according to the Pakistan army's account of the incident.

Soon after midnight on Nov. 26, at approximately 12:05 a.m., a NATO sergeant called a Pakistani major at one of the border control centers that the two sides use to coordinate their efforts to complain that U.S. Special Forces had received "indirect fire" from a Pakistani border checkpoint at Gora Parai, in Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency. Seven minutes later, the NATO sergeant got back in touch with the Pakistani major to say that NATO forces had engaged a different location, the Volcano border checkpoint, some 15 km south of Gora Parai.Read more ....

The deficit-reduction stalemate in Washington has put the Pentagon on a collision course with $500 billion in "automatic" budget cuts over the next 10 years.

But even before last week's failure of Congress' "supercommittee" to find an alternative solution, the Defense Department faced potential cuts of as much as $400 billion over 10 years. Any chance that might trigger some "rush orders" to get a jump on the historic budget ax that's likely to fall?Read more ....

SEOUL, South Korea — Thousands of government and private aid officials converge this week on the port city of Busan for a summit aimed at making sure billions of dollars in global aid money gets to the people who need it most.

The world’s premier development aid forum — the fourth of its kind since 2003 — starts Tuesday and comes at a sensitive time for those pushing to better coordinate efforts to help the poor.

To understand how important remotely piloted aircraft are to the U.S. military, consider this: The U.S. Air Force says this year it will train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.

And that's changing the nature of aerial warfare — and the pilots who wage it.Steve, a lieutenant colonel, grew up wanting to be in the Air Force. And that meant one thing: wanting to be a pilot.

To him, flying is physical: the pull of gravity, the sounds inside the cockpit.

"You hear those things, you feel those things, and you react to them as you need to," he says.

Steve joined the Air Force in 1997 and started out flying F-15s. But he quickly started to see signs that his world was changing. When he was given a chance to fly drones, he took it.

Now, he is at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico helping the Air Force build a different kind of pilot.

BAGHDAD—U.S. and Iraqi leaders signaled Wednesday that the two governments are working toward expanding efforts for American forces to continue training and cooperating with Iraqi soldiers after completion of next month's troop withdrawal.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said there is "no doubt the U.S. forces have a role in providing training of Iraqi forces." Vice President Joe Biden, who arrived in Baghdad on Tuesday night to meet with Iraqi leaders and salute American troops as the war winds to a formal close, said the U.S. will provide security assistance to the Iraqis at Baghdad's request.Read more ....

The Air Force is extending the mission of an experimental robotic space plane that’s been circling the Earth for the last nine months.

The pilotless X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle, was launched in March from Cape Canaveral, Fla. At the time, Air Force officials offered few details about the mission, saying that the space plane simply provided a way to test new technologies in space, such as satellite sensors and other components.

Imagine North Korea collapses. How many soldiers would be needed – in the best case assuming North Koreans don’t put up a resistance – to stabilize the country so that food and medicine can get in and other work can start to be done?

Jennifer Lind, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, and research partner Bruce Bennett of Rand Corp. have been crunching the numbers and come up with a surprisingly large figure: 300,000 to 400,000.

My Comment: What is my take on North Korea's future .... I foresee a Romanian type/style of revolution in which (in a span of a few days) the military and security forces .... coupled with massive civilian unrest .... will topple the regime in a brief but violent confrontation.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il acknowledging applause from soldiers as he inspects the Korean People's Army Unit. WAToday

The Real North Korea Threat -- Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, The Diplomat

A year has passed since North Korea conducted its unexpected shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Yet, while tensions between the two Koreas seem less intense now, the threat posed by North Korea’s military continues to be as complex and diversified as ever. Indeed, even as the North Korea looks like it is edging toward collapse, there are signs of dangerous military changes, including the further politicization of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and the diversification of its military capabilities.Read more ....

My Comment: A sobering assessment on North Korea's military capabilities.

North Korea said on Wednesday that it is making rapid progress on work to enrich uranium and build a light-water nuclear power plant, increasing worries that the country is developing another way to make atomic weapons.

An unidentified spokesman at Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the construction of an experimental light-water reactor and low enriched uranium are "progressing apace".

The statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said that North Korea has a sovereign right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy and that "neither concession nor compromise should be allowed".

KABUL, Afghanistan — A cross-border incident involving NATO and Pakistani forces was quickly defused early on Wednesday with no loss of life, according to Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for the American-led international coalition here.

Few details of the incident were immediately available but it apparently involved heavy artillery fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in Afghanistan’s Paktika province.

The firing broke out at a time of Pakistani anger over the killing of 24 of its soldiers in a United States air strike on Saturday. Pakistan closed its border to NATO supply convoys and pulled out of an international conference on Afghanistan next week in Bonn in protest at the killings.Read more ....

Update:NATO: Pakistan Cooperates on New Border Incident -- FOX News/APMy Comment: If there was loss of life in this incident today .... and after the loss of 2 dozen Pakistani soldiers on the weekend ..... I can only imagine how heated the rhetoric would have been on both sides of the border.

Pakistan stiffened its public stance on a Nato attack on Wednesday, accusing commanders of deliberately targeting two border posts and killing 24 of its soldiers.

But the prime minister also offered a glimmer of hope that Pakistan could still attend a crucial conference on the future of Afghanistan.

The deaths have provoked daily demonstrations in Pakistan where much of the population cannot believe the attack was an accident.

The US military insists a joint patrol with Afghan forces was first upon first and only attacked the posts – which a commander mistakenly identified as Taliban training camps – after checking there were no Pakistani forces nearby.

KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO says Pakistan is showing signs it might be willing to cooperate with the coalition again in the wake of NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops.

NATO spokesman in Kabul, German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, said Wednesday that Pakistani security forces fully cooperated with NATO during a cross-border incident the night before in Paktia province along the border. He says details about who was firing at whom are still being collected and that no one was injured in the incident.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve moved Wednesday with other major central banks to buttress financial markets by increasing the availability of dollars outside the United States, reflecting growing concern about the fallout of the European debt crisis.

The central banks announced that they would slash by roughly half the cost of an existing program under which banks in foreign countries can borrow dollars from their own central banks, which in turn get those dollars from the Fed. The banks also said that loans will be available until February 2013, extending a previous endpoint of August 2012.

WASHINGTON: As the election campaign heats up, so does the debate over guns and butter. Defense Secretary Panetta and his crew, joined by the GOP, say we must fund the Pentagon. Our security is at stake in a highly uncertain world. Jobs -- good paying, high-tech jobs -- are at risk, they say.

Some Democrats and other observers -- including the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP now known as the Tea Party -- want foreign bases cut and wonder why we pour so much treasure into the military at a time when we are pulling out of our two biggest wars.

BRUSSELS (AP) - Under pressure to deliver shock treatment to the ailing euro, European finance ministers failed to come up with a plan for European countries to spend within their means. Such a plan is needed before Europe's central bank and the International Monetary Fund consider stepping in to stem an escalating threat to the global economy.

The ministers delayed action on major financial issues - such as the concept of a closer fiscal union that would guarantee more budgetary discipline - until their bosses meet next week in Brussels.

Vice President Joe Biden meets with Commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq General Lloyd Austin and U.S. ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Nov. 29, 2011. (Saad Shalash / Reuters)

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has told Iraqi leaders in Baghdad that the two countries are embarking on a "new path" as the United States prepares to complete a troop pullout by the end of December.

Biden was speaking Wednesday in a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The vice president said the United States is keeping its promise under a 2008 agreement with Iraq to withdraw U.S. forces before an end-of-2011 deadline. The pullout will end a military presence that began with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Pakistan's cable TV association has taken BBC World News off air after screening of a documentary that it deemed anti-Pakistan. Photograph: BBC

BBC World News Blocked In Pakistan -- BBC

Channel taken off air after showing documentary on accusations that country was failing to meet commitments in 'war on terror'

The BBC's World News has been taken off the air in Pakistan after broadcasting a documentary that was deemed to be critical of the country. Secret Pakistan, which was screened last Wednesday, explored accusations by CIA officials and western diplomats that Pakistan was failing to meet its commitments in the "war on terror". Khalid Arain, president of the country's cable TV association, said operators had blocked the BBC service as a result.Read more ....

WASHINGTON: The Air Force is turning to its allies for help as it looks to maintain a viable global presence in the face of coming budget cuts, a top Air Force general said today.

The service expects to get much smaller as the Pentagon's struggles to meet the White House deficit reduction goals and possible fallout from the Super Committee's failure to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal budget, Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard Newton said at an Air Force Association-sponsored event this morning. The assistant vice chief of staff wouldn't say how small the service may end up being. But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said the Air Force may end up being the smallest its been since its creation after World War II,

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexico's two most powerful criminal gangs are locked in a titanic battle for control of the country's heartland in a struggle that's redrawn Mexico's map of violence.

Violence has dropped along the U.S. border, with Ciudad Juarez, once considered the most violent city in the world, seeing a 35 percent decline in homicides this year.

That good news is balanced by bad news in Guadalajara, Culiacan and Veracruz, where the Sinaloa cartel, whose bulwark has always been Mexico's Pacific coast, and the Zetas, a violent gang that originally was created to protect the Gulf cartel along the Gulf of Mexico coast, are locked in a spiraling struggle that's seen each gang invade the other's territory.

A Marine gears up for a patrol in March in Northern Marjah, Afghanistan. The Corps is looking for a wearable power system that could provide energy to radios and other electronics. Sgt. Jesse Stence / Marine Corps

Corps Seeks Wearable System To Power Equipment -- Marine Times

The Corps has launched a new effort to find a wearable power system that provides energy to radios and other electronics that Marines carry with them in the field.

The service zeroed in on researching the systems as part of its next Expeditionary Forward Operating Base event, Marine officials said. The ExFOB team, based at the Pentagon, will evaluate the most promising systems at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in an exhibition from April 30 to May 4, said Maj. Sean Sadlier, a logistics analyst in the Corps’ Expeditionary Energy Office.Read more ....

My Comment: It sure beats lugging around batteries or fuel to power the generators.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet assigned to the Argonauts of Strike Fighter Squadron 147 launches from the USS Ronald Reagan in the Pacific Ocean, Oct. 31, 2011. The Ronald Reagan, which is homeported in San Diego, is conducting routine training in the eastern Pacific Ocean. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Anthony W. Johnson

Russia And The Nuclear News That Wasn't -- Daniel McGroarty, Real Clear World

Imploding Europe, nuclear Iran, American cities under 'Occupation' the end of the NBA lockout - whatever it is we think of as defining the world in the last week of the second-to-last month of 2011, it’s clear what won’t make the cut: This won’t be remembered as the week Russia threatened Europe with nuclear missiles.

And yet, that's just what happened. In a blast from the Cold War past, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated that if the U.S. and its NATO allies proceed with plans for a regional missile defense system, Russia will put the European anti-missile installations in its nuclear cross-hairs.Read more ....

My Comment: I was young when I first realized that the West was never going to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union .... and I also knew that the Soviet Union was not going to launch an attack against the West even though many in the West believed that there was a slight possibility of such an action.

Jumping to 2011 .... no one in Russia now believes that the West is going to attack them .... and more to the point .... no one in the West now take Russian threats seriously.

How Much Defense Is Enough In The Asia-Pacific Region? -- Walter Pincus, Washington Post

We need more transparency about the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan Defense Department that can accept budget cuts over the next 10 years of $460 billion. And if the sequester of an additional $600 billion or more takes place beginning in fiscal 2013, would it “hollow out the force” and create “risks” because of threats we won’t be able to deter?

More sensible than much of the rhetoric was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s Nov. 14 plea attached to a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for flexibility rather than across-the-board reductions, which are part of the sequestration law.

My Comment: Much of the world's population resides in Asia, as well as it becoming the world's fastest growing economic/political/military powerhouse. With such a development, this Pentagon/State Department/White House focus should not surprise anyone.

Another week, another explosion at or near an Iranian military installation (or is it a nuclear research facility?). As usual, the regime doesn’t know what to say. The mullahcracy is so intensely divided that different “spokesmen” from different ministries/news outlets/cults/mafias put out different versions. There was an explosion, or at least “the sound of an explosion.” This goes out on the wires. Then, no, there was no explosion, it was just the sound of our fierce military training. Then again, yes, there was something, but not to worry, just go home and shut up. And so it goes in the Islamic Republic of Iran, as our president so loves to call his intended international partners.

"Most of the buildings on the compound appear extensively damaged. Some buildings appear to have been completely destroyed," the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington said in an analysis, referring to pictures taken from space of the site before and after the Nov. 12 blast.

About Me

I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.